


Mead Queens and E Dreams

by noetherSA



Series: moyashimonmon: tales of tales of agriculture [2]
Category: Moyashimon | Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture
Genre: Canon Trans Character, F/M, Mead, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, an oc that hopefully isn't too invasive, semicanon lesbians, swearing in english, titty skittles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:04:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noetherSA/pseuds/noetherSA
Summary: The Itsuki lab seminar sets up for a new project, and Hasegawa helps Kei make some progress on her transition.Chapter 2 is pretty overtly sexual, but the rest is basically sfw. However, it does contain discussion of a certain infographic from 4chan that is rather raunchy.





	1. Diet plan.jpg

To: [ Itsukik@tau.edu ](mailto:Itsukik@tau.edu)

From: [ yuukik@tau.edu ](mailto:yuukik@tau.edu)

Subject: Thoughts on this chart?

 

Hi Professor-

Sawaki sent me this chart he found on the internet the other day and I was wondering if you had any idea if it was accurate, especially with respect to the dietary parts. It sounds like something that I might want to try out in conjunction with the lifestyle changes I’ve been working with and such. Anyway yeah let me know what you think.

Yuuki Kei

Hiyoshi Liquor

904-442-2757

Attachment: [Diet plan.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/QwT7Mu2.jpg)

 

To: [ yuukik@tau.edu ](mailto:yuukik@tau.edu)

From: [ itsukik@tau.edu ](mailto:itsukik@tau.edu)

Subject: Re: Thoughts on this Chart

 

Hello

Come by the lab on Tuesday around 13:00.

Itsuki Keizou

Tokyo Agriculture University

College of Biology

Microbiology Department

042-273-8676x2551


	2. A Warm Summer Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuki Kei: on-and-off student at Agri-U and part-time waitress. Rumors of her being the *son* of a sake brewer have been greatly exaggerated.
> 
> Sawaki Soemon Tadayasu: a student at Agri-U with the mysterious power to visualize microscopic organisms. Rumors of him being the main character are greatly exaggerated.

Kei rested her head against Tadayasu’s shoulder, her long, flowing hair fell gracefully across their combined silhouette. The cool sensation of the concrete stoop they sat on combined with the warmth of the sun shining through the trees and the smell of humidity in the air to give the impression of a warm summer morning. Tadayasu clumsily wrapped his arm around her shoulders and ended up tugging on her hair uncomfortably. 

“Ouch,” Kei said, though it hadn’t really hurt much. Her companion sheepishly adjusted his arm. Something felt off about that momentary discomfort, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. 

Tadayasu leaned back onto the ground and she followed, turned on her side so their faces touched. Her breasts pushed pleasantly against his body. She carefully wrapped her legs around one of his so that the flat of her crotch was flat against the outside of his thigh. He adjusted his position a bit, sending a shock of bliss through her-

Her what?

Now this was weird. Kei could’ve sworn there was something else down there usually. After thinking for a moment, she realized that she hadn’t the faintest idea as to what. She briefly considered it might’ve been a dick or something, but that really didn’t sound right and she rejected the idea out of hand. 

Anyway, whatever was going on down there felt really good. After continuing for a moment, intense waves of ecstasy washed over her as she 

And then Kei woke up.

God damn it.


	3. Soggy Morning

Kei lay in bed, gripping her spare pillow in a full-body hug under the comforter. There was an unwelcome wetness in her groin area from whatever dream she’d been having and she had to pee really bad. She pulled the sheet back to inspect the damage.  _ Looks like I’m running a load of wash earlier than I thought _ , she reflected, unamused.

She turned over and snatched her phone off the floor next to her futon to check the time. There was juuust too little time before she needed to get up that she wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep again, and besides, she still had to clean herself off. She checked to see if Tadayasu had texted her again in the night, but the last activity on that front was when they’d wished each other good night. She’d sent him a ❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ ) too, which she thought was pretty suave. 

Kei didn’t use emotes much in The Before Times, when she was still impossibly defensive and self-conscious about anything that could make her appear feminine. She’d discovered soon after she got her first cell phone back in high school that using emotes was pretty definitively coded as such: one of her and Tadayasu’s friends jokingly pointed it out once, and then he went to the nurse’s office, while she went to the principal’s. 

She tried to recall the details of the dream she’d been having before she woke up. Tadayasu was there, she knew that much. They were cuddling together and stuff... oh, and she was a girl. She took a deep breath and exhaled. She’d had dreams like that, where she was a woman, at least since middle school, and maybe even earlier than that. They were always bittersweet. The deep feeling of ease and rightness that accompanied them was something to savor, but damn, waking up afterwards always felt like a suckerpunch to the gut. 

She sighed heavily and laboriously hauled herself out of bed and lurched over to the bathroom, yanking off the soiled pillowcase and chucking it into the laundry bag in the corner. 

In the shower, she carefully shaved her legs, chest, pits, and face and only nicked herself two or three times. She was lucky enough that her body hair never came in very thick, but it was still a lot of ground to cover anyway, and Kei loathed every follicle. Especially the scraggly ones around her nipples. Just thinking about them made her skin crawl.

She washed her hair and dried herself off. She was considering making a real effort to grow her hair out, but it was a difficult decision to make. She wasn’t quite ready to lose the ability to blend back into the crowd as a regular boy if need be. Like, what if she wanted to take an office job? Or retail? What about when she inevitably took over the brewery from her father? The Hiyoshis and her band of comrades were exceptionally accommodating, even enthusiastic towards her quirks, and as a result her life was stable at that moment... but it was anyone’s guess what the future could hold. They had to graduate sometime.

Kei attempted to put that cynicism out of her mind while she finished getting ready. Besides, today she was going to meet up with the gang for the first time in a while. Well, the  _ whole  _ gang anyway- the mall outing was just a couple days ago, after all. Perhaps more impactfully, Tadaysu had hinted that the professor and Hasegawa had a plan in mind with respect to the chart. She’d pestered him for details, but the minutiae of human endocrinology was decidedly not his expertise.

About halfway through getting her dress on, it occurred to her one other thing Tadayasu had mentioned while they were chatting last night: the lab seminar crew was prepped to start working on a new project. Itsuki was probably gonna put her to work. She rummaged around in her dresser for some more ...disposable... clothes, and eventually decided on an old band t-shirt that she felt complimented her figure, some black skinny jeans, a drapey black shawl with geometric yellow designs on it, and her stompy black boots. 

She struck a series of poses in the mirror to reassure herself that she still looked cool and like a girl without a powerful goth loli dress to protect her. She sorta did. Her perfectly flat chest was definitely more noticeable, for one. But the wig, makeup and shawl kiiinda balanced it out? Kei figured that she probably looked normal enough to get through the 10 minute commute to school, at least.

_ And after working in the lab all day _ , she thought, a wry grin appearing on her face,  _ I’ll have a nightmare aura around me strong enough to ward off the nosiest housewife in the city. _

She did a quick wallet-phone-keys check and set off toward the station, a long day’s work, and above all, the promise of progress on a problem plaguing her since she was a kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The band shirt in question is a treasured article of SEX BUNNY merch she got at one of their concerts. Kei fondly remembers saving up her allowance for months prior, and the elaborate conspiracy she and her friends concocted to sneak her out of the house that night. The shirt features a stuffed rabbit in bondage gear with the band’s name in bubbly pink letters circling around it. Kei owns a second such shirt signed by the late miss Kawaguchi herself. It is currently in a box in the attic at her parent’s house, carefully folded and wrapped in plastic.


	4. Draught of Kings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Itsuki Keizou: A professor of microbiology at Tokyo Agricultural University. Rumors of his connection to the great zoology department sewer explosion of ‘96 are greatly exaggerated.
> 
> Hasegawa Haruka: a graduate student at Agri-U and heiress to a wealthy family in Tokyo. Rumors about the time she drank two glasses of chardonnay and punched a 200 year old table in half are pretty understated, actually.
> 
> Misato Kaoru: the kind of guy who read that you don’t need to wash your hair because of ~natural oils~ and used that to justify having not done it for the previous month.
> 
> Kawahama Takuma: ironic nationalist on 2channel by night, mild-mannered STEM nerd by day.
> 
> Oikawa Hazuki: a freshman like Sawaki. Does gay things with Mutou.
> 
> Mutou Aoi: a junior who is frequently drunk and/or covered in viscera. Does gay things with Oikawa.

“MEAD!” Professor Itsuki exclaimed as he slammed a glass jug of translucent golden liquid on the desk, “THE DRAUGHT OF KINGS!”

The seminar crew applauded dutifully. Itsuki’s dramatic monologues about booze to introduce their projects were a longstanding tradition at this point.

“Mead is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages known,” Itsuki continued, adjusting his eyeglasses to catch the light just so, “with traces found in archeological digs dated back over 7000 years. It was enjoyed by the likes of Beowulf at Heorot and Cleopatra at Thebes. Mead is simple to brew: it only requires honey, water and yeast. But don’t let that fool you, mead has all the depth and variety of any other project we’ve worked on.”

“Also we can rack it after like two weeks, so we ought to be done by the semester break,” Hasegawa interjected.

“Correct,” Itsuki continued, “The setup process for mead is also very simple. Miss Hasegawa and I decided on three batches, and I expect we’ll have them all ready by the end of the day -you don’t have anything going on today, right- anyway, it’s really just a matter of pouring the ingredients into a tank and stirring.”

Misato raised his hand gingerly. “Uh, Kawahama and I have a quiz at 14:00, so we actually have to get going kinda soon, uh, sir.”

Itsuki turned his terminally inscrutable glare to face the two men, melting them into a puddle of shame and despair with the heat of a thousand disappointed suns. “Fine.” he said, after he felt they’d gotten the message.

Hasegawa scrambled to get the crew’s train of thought back on the rails. “Uhm. So yeah. We’re doing three batches: one that’s gonna be a lighter mead, probably like five percent ABV, one that’s gonna be basically as strong as we can make it, maybe in the twenty percent range, and a cherry flavored batch that’ll be in the ten to fifteen percent area somewhere.”

“Five to twenty percent? That’s a really wide range,” Tadayasu remarked, inquisitively.

“Right,” Itsuki said, “it basically comes down to the ratio of water to honey in the batch. More honey at the start means more alcohol at the end. Although, there’s a limit on how little we can dilute the honey and still get mead out at the end. Honey is almost entirely sugar with essentially no other nutrients to speak of. It needs to be dissolved in water for it to be habitable.”

“It also depends on the type of yeast used,” Hasegawa added, “the light and cherry batches are gonna use a red wine yeast, and the hard batch is gonna have champagne yeast. I think the champagne yeast will probably make it really dry, so I imagine we’re going to back sweeten it a bunch, but that’s like, much later in the process.” she finished her monologue by gesturing off into the distance to indicate the future.

“Wait, where are we getting cherries?” Oikawa asked, “the trees aren’t even gonna blossom for another month at least.”

“The cherries and honey are leftovers from the agriculture department’s stock room,” Itsuki explained, “anyway, I need to go grade some papers.* Hasegawa can take things from here.” The professor gave a shallow bow and excused himself from the lab.

Hasegawa cleared her throat. “Well, uh, I was hoping Misato and Kawahama would be able to stick around. Let’s see... Sawaki, you can handle the cherries. Just grab a ten liter bucket and mush probably sixish kilos of them up into paste. They’re probably pretty tender at this point so it shouldn’t take too long. Mutou, Oikawa, I need you to warm up the honey so it’s easier to pour? I think we have some shallow tubs lying around, just fill two or three with hot water and toss a bunch of the jugs in. And then I gotta talk to Yuuki about stuff for a minute.” a beat. “WELL COME ON, GET TO WORK!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Specifically midterms, which had been on his desk since, oh, winter break or so.
> 
> Feel like making mead yourself? Check out [citysteader’s tutorials,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZB1jRkkqM) and if you can handle a lot of bro humor, also watch [modern rogue’s video](https://youtu.be/2YwAvLru2ec)


	5. Unsourced Medical Advice

Misato and Kawahama slunk out of the lab, giggling about some inside joke. Sawaki, Mutou and Oikawa headed over to the storage closet to dig out the equipment they needed.

“Alright, kiddo,” Hasegawa took a deep breath and looked Kei straight in the eyes, “I took a look at [that chart](https://i.imgur.com/QwT7Mu2.jpg) you sent the professor, and I got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Uh, the bad news?” Kei ventured tentatively.

“The chart is garbage. I don’t know where Sawaki found it, but in general, unsourced medical advice from the internet is not worth paying attention to.” she ran her fingers through her hair. “Like, the stuff about soy and meat is a myth bodybuilding nerds made up because they don’t know the difference between plant estrogens and animal estrogens. I mean, if soy made enough of a difference to do what you want, every dude in the country would be impotent and cutesy already, right?”

“O-oh. I guess that makes sense.” Kei crossed her arms. This wasn’t really the response she was hoping for. “What about that herb it mentioned, pueraria mirifica or something? I think my mom takes that stuff for like, hot flashes and stuff.”

There was a series of loud bangs and thuds from the storage closet as equipment clattered to the floor. “Fuck god damn, Sawaki,” Mutou yelled, swearing in english, “Just get a stepladder before you break something!”

“But the ladder’s behind all that other shit! Look, why don’t _you_ get the bucket, you’re like, a whole head taller than me!”

“Oh my god, fine, you tiny gremlin man”

“SHUT _UP_ HOLY SHIT” Hasegawa yelled, from across the lab, “I’M TRYING TO HOLD A CONVERSATION HERE”

You could hear a pin drop.

“Uh, anyway,” Hasegawa continued, “look, I can tell that this is super important to you, and like, I feel that relying on _herbal remedies_ ,” a look of particular scorn crossed her face, “for something like that is probably a bad idea. Uhm. so my thinking is, uh, well here’s a question: so say you can just take a pill, and your body would change to whatever you want. Would you want it to be a little more feminine, or like, a _lot_ more feminine, like with boobs and stuff?” she made a gesture in front of her chest to indicate “boobs.”

Kei was caught off guard. It occurred to her that this was probably an obvious question, but she hadn’t really thought of it before. She stared blankly at Hasegawa as she thought.

Hasegawa continued, trying to fill the silence with literally anything, “‘Cuz like, you can do either. It’s not even that hard. And like, this is definitely something I want to help you with if I can, and I think that goes for everyone else too.”

“I guess I would wanna be more feminine,” Kei began, “I mean, if I could just be a girl, that would be good. I don’t really like being a guy.” she paused for a moment to think of how to phrase her thoughts, “I guess like, I wish that being feminine wasn’t a costume I had to take off at night, y’know? I wish it was just the default, and like, that I could roll out of bed and have everyone just get that I’m a girl without having to worry. So, yeah, like, I’d rather have the stronger pill. In that scenario.”

“Okay. That’s kind of what I figured,” Hasegawa said, “So for that, you need estrogen and an antiandrogen. Here’s the good news: my uh, my girlfriend, she’s Like You, and she gets her stuff I think from some pharmacy online, for pretty cheap. I can connect you two and you can work something out. Or actually - HEY SAWAKI!” she beckoned to him from across the lab.

Tadayasu finished dumping a can of cherry goo into his bucket and came eagerly trotting over.

Hasegawa thought out loud, “Maybe I should just have you meet her-”

“Meet who?” Tadayasu asked.

“My girlfriend. She-”

“Whoa you have a girlfriend! I thought you were dating Misato!” Tadayasu said, cutting her off.

“Fuck you. Anyway, we could do like a double date or whatever. I think she and Kei would have a lot to talk about,” Hasegawa said, “She has Thursdays and Mondays off right now, do either of those work for you two?”

“I have a late class on Mondays,” Tadayasu said, “but I can do Thursday for sure.”

“Yeah, Thursday sounds good!” Kei said, eagerly. She was positively beaming.

“It’s settled, then!” Hasegawa placed a reassuring hand on Kei’s shoulder. “Okay, let’s get back to work. Kei, can you help me get the sacks of yeast in here real quick? They’re out in the professor’s truck still. And then you can help your boyfriend pound cherries.”

Kei felt herself blushing, and looked over at Tadayasu, who was even redder.

“What? Oh come on, it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Hasegawa rolled her eyes, “you two are such kids.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Internet cool guy hbomberguy did a video a while back discussing the soy bodybuilding phenomenon [here](https://youtu.be/C8dfiDeJeDU)
> 
> Also worth noting- the people that push the soy feminization conspiracy theory probably also wholeheartedly buy into the stereotype of asian men as being especially effeminate. 
> 
> And like, the chart in question lists /fit/ as a source holy shit. Listen to your cool big sis Hasegawa on this one.


	6. Am I a Girl?

“You have to tell me all the details,” Kei said, as she and Hasegawa walked over to the garage, “What’s her name? Is she older or younger than you? How did you meet?” She hardly ever told Kei, or anyone else for that matter, much about her personal life, and Kei was fascinated.

“Uh, well, her name’s Minami Natsuki, she’s like, a year younger than me, I think? We sorta met in highschool, but we never interacted much cuz she was a grade lower. I ran into her at uh, a concert* a couple months ago, and we hit it off, she explained who she was, and I was like ‘oh shit, no way, you look great,’ and then she was like ‘you also look great’ and then we started dating.”

“Aaaa that’s adorable!” Kei practically had hearts in her eyes. Meeting an SO at a concert was like, in her top five most romantic couple origin stories. “Who was playing?”

“I think it was Screaming Donut Boys?** They’re like, a local punk rock band.” 

“Oh cool.” Kei searched for a good way to connect with the older student on this. “You ever listen to, uh, Discount Leopard?*** ” She hoped that was an impressive enough band to name drop.

Hasegawa grinned a bit. “Oh shit. I actually have a story about that. So way back in highschool, I dated this fucking guy who was like, super into the whole scene D.L. was part of or whatever. It was all he ever wanted to talk about. He was honestly a super boring dude, but I guess I was a dumb idiot teen and didn’t really notice somehow. Anyway. So after we’d been going out for a bit, he invites me back to his house.”

“Oh no!”

“Right? So stupid idiot teen me just goes over to his house. it’s a pretty nice condo, well decorated, he and his sister had their own rooms and everything. But it’s like 15:00 on a weekday, so we’re the only ones there. We go into his room, and he’s got like, band posters and some gunpla on display and stuff, y’know, typical high school boy’s room. We sit on his bed, and like, we were about to start making out, but then out of the corner of my eye, I see this fucking life-size standee of M✩A✩I poking out of the closet.”

“That’s a bad sign.”

“Yeah! So I made some joke about like, ‘is it okay for us to be doing this with your real girlfriend right there,’ and he got super defensive about it. So I looked a little more closely at the standee, and I noticed like, it was kinda creased a bit and there was a definite water stain around her mouth area-”

“Was he like, making out with the standee? Holy shit holy shit.”

“That’s what I figured. So I’m like sitting there in this guy’s room, on his bed, in his fucking arms, and it dawns on me: this is how I die. I’m just freaking the hell out, y’know, this boy is a serial killer, he’s going to flay me alive and spread my skin out on top of his creepy fuck standee.”

“How did you escape?”

“I pretended I was having menstrual cramps. I was like, ‘I gotta use the bathroom or I’m gonna bleed all over your bed and our parents will find out,’ and he freaked out and let go of me. So I go hide in the bathroom for a minute to figure out how to get out of his house without him noticing. I could hear him rummaging around in his room -probably cramming the standee into the closet more- so I just reeeally quietly opened the door to the bathroom, grabbed my bag off the coffee table, carefully opened the front door and closed it behind me, then fucking bolted!”

“I think I would’ve actually died,” Kei mused.

“Between you and me, I’m still kinda surprised I didn’t.”

The pair arrived at Itsuki’s truck. It was parked inexpertly in the lot under the biology building, along with some of the landscapers’ pickups and professor Yamamoto’s ancient corolla. Hasegawa unlocked the padlock on the rear door and slid it open. The truck was, as always, filled to burst with containers and equipment. Most of the stuff was left over from when the department had foisted a freshman organic chemistry class on him a semester prior. 

“I forgot to mention,” Hasegawa said, carefully stepping over a half-empty jug of star san and a jar of sulphuric acid, “you don’t think Sawaki sent you that chart to try to get you to suck his dick, do you?”

“What? Of course not” Kei was somewhat offended at the insinuation that her childhood sweetheart could be a manipulative scumbag. “What gave you that idea.”

“One of the things was like, ‘drink 500 mL of semen a day’ or whatever. Like he doesn’t seem like that kind of guy, but I dunno. Whoever made that chart was -catch!” Hasegawa heaved and tossed a sack of yeast to Kei, who caught it expertly. “Whoever made that is either a creepy pervert or has a weird sense of humor. Or both.”**** she climbed out of the truck carrying her own bag of yeast.

“Oh that. I mean, I don’t think he read it that carefully. Like I made a joke about the cum thing and he almost choked on his drink. Also I don’t think he really got that we were dating until this past weekend sooo.”

Hasegawa sighed and pulled the door closed. “That guy is such a space cadet.”

The pair walked in silence for a good portion of the way back to the lab. Neither of them were exactly paragons of upper body strength, and carrying the yeast bags was more exertion than either would like to admit. 

Eventually Kei spoke up. “Hey, I got another question about Minami.”

“Shoot.”

“You called her your girlfriend, right? But if she’s, uh, ‘like me,’ or whatever,  wouldn’t she be your boyfriend?” the question had been burning in the back of Kei’s mind for quite a while by now. It had a lot of important implications, though she really didn’t have the language to express it yet.

“Well, I mean, maybe? I guess it depends on how you look at it.” Hasegawa paused to shift the weight of the bag a bit. “But like, she definitely seems at home being a girl, and I know internally I think of her as a woman more than anything. So like, the way I see it, that makes her my girlfriend.”

Kei paused to think again. “So am I Tadayasu’s girlfriend? Am I a girl?”

“I dunno, are you?”

“I dunno, am I?”

“Well, okay, so like, Natsuki can explain this high-minded philosophical shit better than I can, but I’ll try to paraphrase it a bit. So, a lot of gender comes down to social roles, right? Not all of it, obviously, some of it’s probably internal somehow. But like, in practical terms, a lot of what makes someone a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ comes down to how other people view them and what roles within society they try to embody. So I guess in your case, it seems like most people tend to see you as a girl, or at least, as something other than a guy, and then you seem to be leaning into that perception as much as you can. So yeah, I would say that you’re basically a girl.”

Kei felt her heart leap up into her stomach. This was the easily the highest praise she’d gotten in years. At the same time, it was a lot to think over. For most of her life, she’d been utterly consigned to her fate: she was a boy, and that was that. Over the last year, though, she’d slowly began to break out of that thought process. Maybe she could act like a girl. Maybe she could dress like a girl. Maybe she could talk like one, or even fuck like one. But she sort of internalized it as emulation on some level. If she could truly see herself as a girl, and not as a boy doing his best to act like one, well... it was a shift she desperately wanted to make.

Hasegawa reached over to rustle Kei’s hair reassuringly, and accidentally knocked her wig loose. “Shit. fuck.” she swore in english, “sorry. I, uh, forgot that ah, fuck.”   
Kei giggled.  _ Hell,  _ she thought, _ maybe if I already have everyone else fooled... maybe I’ll come around soon too. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *A lie. They met at winter comiket. Minami was cosplaying as girl ranma and Hasegawa was helping out a friend at her booth.
> 
> **The Screaming Donut Boys were formed in 1989 by singer Ueda “kidney stone” Hikari, bassist Jason Matthews, and drummer Fukui Aoi. Over time, the band exchanged members frequently, eventually settling on stable lineup in the early 2000s with kidney stone switching to bass, Himura Kokoro on vocals, and Kobayashi Marika on drums. Kidney stone announced their gender transition in ‘02, cementing Screaming Donut Boys as an all-girls band. Hasegawa and Minami had gone to one of their concerts, but it was on their 3rd date rather than how they met.
> 
> ***Discount Leopard was a rock band that achieved peak notoriety during the mid 90’s when drummer Nakamura Goro was caught attempting to burn down keyboardist M✩A✩I’s apartment complex after she refused his sexual advances. M✩A✩I went on to play for several other local bands, including SEX BUNNY, which she is most famous for. Nakamura went on to be on trial, and then in jail.
> 
> **** Between you and me, my money’s on both.


	7. Girls Like Us

It was Thursday night, and Kei could barely contain herself. It wasn’t every day she got to meet a fellow crossdresser. She knew a fair few through the internet, of course, and she was loosely acquainted with a couple others in the area, but she seldom felt a meaningful connection with any of them. It’s hard for a twenty-year-old college freshman to really bond with a thirty-year-old sysadmin with a wife and kids, especially when their lone commonality is so ephemeral by nature. And like, anyone who’s fallen into the rabbit hole of being extremely online knows that internet friends can never quite fill the same role as friends in the flesh. In short, Kei felt incredibly alienated from her peers.

But here, on the other hand, was an opportunity to bond with a girl like her who was only a little older than she was, and was presumably at least cool enough to win Hasegawa’s approval, which wasn’t exactly easy to do.

The apartment pager groggily buzzed to life with its familiar sickly and unstable tone. Kei lept out of her computer chair to answer.

“Hello, this is Yuuki,” the robotic nature of the greeting broken only slightly by her excitement.

Tadayasu’s garbled voice spilled out of the aging intercom speaker. “Hey Kei, we’re parked out front.

“Okay, I’ll be down in a second!” she grabbed her purse and bolted out the door.

Tadayasu was waiting for her in the lobby, wearing the cool guy outfit they’d picked out together the previous weekend. Kei waved to him from the elevator and jogged over. They embraced emphatically, and Kei savored the sensations of their physical closeness.

Hasegawa’s car was parked outside, idling quietly. There was a slight drizzle that had been going off an on all day, heavy and persistent enough to notice, but light and sporadic enough that most people weren’t bothering with umbrellas. Tadayasu opened the back door and motioned to Kei to get in first. She affectionately ran her hand along his shoulder as she climbed in. Tadayasu slid in behind her and shut the door.

“Hey Yuuki,” Hasegawa said nonchalantly. She turned around in the driver’s seat and indicated towards the person next to her. “This is Natsuki, by the way.”

Minami waved. She had a series of jangly bracelets that sprang to life with a chorus of little clinks and chimes as she moved. Her style of dress seemed to involve a lot of flowy patterned fabrics that were probably intended for someone a little younger. Kei could sort of tell that she was a kindred spirit, so to speak, but that was a skill she’d honed over years pouring over photos of her peers online. To a passerby, she probably came off as an attractive and slightly eccentric, but otherwise unremarkable young woman.

“So we were thinking of getting pizza. Is that cool with you?” Hasegawa asked as they pulled out into the street.

“Yeah, sure.” Kei replied. She hadn’t gotten pizza for a while.

“I love your dress, by the way,” Minami said, “Where’d you get it?” she’d clearly spent lots of time wresting control of her voice away from the gremlins of puberty, something Kei had long been meaning to put more work into.

“Oh, thanks! I got it at Lapin Angelique.” Kei attempted as much of a twirl as she could manage while buckled into the back seat of a moving car.

“Oh cool. There’s one of those at the mall by my place, and I’ve been meaning to go check it out one of these days, but all the people in there always seem so up-their-own-ass.” Minami said, scrunching up her face into a frown.

“Yeah, there are a couple branches I’ve been to that are like that.” Kei said, “It sucks because it’s such a niche style, and like, if you want people to get into it you gotta be welcoming and stuff.”

“I mean, to be fair,” Hasegawa said, “the style is based on like, victorian english fashion, and I don’t think they were the most welcoming or down-to-earth people”

“This is accurate,” said Kei.

* * *

 

The pizza place they’d decided on was about three kilometers away, which, in Tokyo evening traffic, was about a half-hour drive. The four of them filled the time catching Kei up on how the mead was doing and listening to Hasegawa rant about intra-university politics.

The restaurant was busy, but at least the wait for a seat wasn’t too long. The rain probably had most people staying in that night.

“So anyway,” Hasegawa asid, continuing her polemic from earlier, “that kiss-ass Yamamoto ended up siding with the chair, and now those idiot biofuel nerds got the electron microscope for the rest of the semester! So like, the whole microbiology department is just fucking paralyzed for the last couple weeks of school. Fucking defense contracts, they’re the worst.” she slid onto the bench in the waiting corner, intimidating the family of four occupying it into ceding enough space.

“Those shitbirds,” Minami said, using an english curse Kei wasn’t familiar with, “see, this is why I quit school. Everything’s just in service of the fucking military. It’s gross and dehumanizing.” she slid in next to Hasegawa, who further encroached into the family’s bench space. The Father stood up.

“Yeah it’s bullshit. Although, I mean, mechanical engineering is probably the worst for that sort of thing,” said Hasegawa.

“I guess,” Minami shrugged, “But I mean, from what you’ve said, it sounds like your professor is a pre-war nationalist moron somehow, so...”

“I think that’s mostly an affectation at this point. He’s nowhere near as scummy as Yamamoto and those guys who just blithely cede half the university’s resources to the military for the sake of it,” Hasegawa was visibly annoyed with this train of thought. She and Itsuki were thick as thieves, a pair of outcasts whose primary motivation in life was making other people uncomfortable. Such righteous trolls had to stick together.

“Maybe in terms of how much actual damage they’re doing,” Minami pressed on despite her girlfriend’s discomfort, “but like, what’s a chinese or korean student gonna think when they see his stupid model zero fighter jet hanging from the ceiling?”

“Hello, Shindo, party of four?” a waitress called from the podium at the entrance. The family quickly got up and hurried over, eager to escape the vulgar women disparaging the great nation’s valiant self defense force. “Right this way, please...” the waitress guided them off into the din of the restaurant proper. Kei and Tadayasu sat down on the bench in their place.

“Wait, so you quit school?” Tadayasu asked.

“Yeah. Well. Kinda,” Minami explained, “I got an associate’s degree, and bailed during the bachelor’s. Not that it really matters, though, I’m not using it for shit right now anyway.”

“What do you do?” Kei asked, extremely aware that this could inform her own career path.

“Uh, I’m a hostess,” Minami was clearly a little embarrassed.

“Oh, I see. What’s that like?” Kei asked, driven by morbid curiosity.

“Eh, it pays the bills.” Minami shrugged. “Like, the hours are shit, obviously, and the customers are basically either irredeemable bastards or probably future newhalves themselves. But it’s kinda cool to get to work with mostly other girls like us, I guess.” she giggled to herself as some idea caught her attention. “Although -fuck- if you ever end up in this line of work, don’t live anywhere near your workplace. There is nothing worse than running into a client at six in the morning when you’re at the convenience store. They do not understand kayfabe at _all_ ”

“Hasegawa, party of four?”

The gang got placed at a booth deep in the culinary jungle, surrounded on all sides by families and groups of co-workers winding down after a hard day’s work. A window to the side looked down onto the crowded street below. Hasegawa and Minami sat on one side, Tadayasu and Kei on the other. Kei made sure to sit close enough to her boyfriend that their shoulders touched. She loved the feeling of reassuring intimacy that closeness gave. Across the table, it appeared that the other couple had the same idea.

“Can I start you folks off with something to drink?” the waitress asked, pulling out a notepad and pen.

“Can I get a dk pepper?” Hasegawa asked. Minami reached across her to grab the drinks menu.

“Sorry, we only have mn phlbb, is that okay?”

“Uh. sure.”

“And for you?” the waitress asked, indicating to Minami.

“I’ll have a margarita” Minami flashed her ID.

“Wonderful. And for you, miss?”

“What kinds of sake do you have?” Asked the sake nerd.

“I’m sorry miss, we don’t serve sake here. Would you like to see the beverages menu?”

The conflicting stimuli of being correctly gendered by the server and then being denied the one true alcoholic beverage had Kei’s brain twisting itself into knots like a headphone cable left in a pocket all afternoon. Tadayasu squeezed her hand under the table and ordered cola for both of them. The waitress disappeared back into the crowded restaurant around them.

“Anyway, I don’t wanna like, psyche you out with the whole hostess thing,” Minami continued, “Like I know that’s an anxiety a lot of newhalves or otokonoko or whatever have, y’know, that the only sort of work they’d be able to get as a girl is like, sex work. Like if you have skills and are personable, you’ll find a niche just fine. I’m just a fucking wastrel.”

“I mean, her dad owns a business, so she’ll probably do okay.” Hasegawa mentioned.

“Oh, then yeah, you probably got it made. Wait, so are you like, out to your folks and stuff?” Minami considered she might be being too forward. “Uh, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Well, not formally,” Kei explained, “I haven’t gone to my dad and told him, like, ‘yes hello, I’m a girl now,’ but- oh, thanks” the waitress had returned with the drinks.

The gang ordered a seafood pizza and the waitress disappeared again.

“But anyway, yeah, like,” Kei took a dejected sip from her decidedly non-sake beverage, “I haven’t come out and said anything yet, but they have to fuckin know. I used to steal mom’s clothes a bunch, and I know they’ve seen photos of me doing crossplay when I went to Jump Festa a couple years ago.”

“Oh! Who’d you go as?” Minami asked, trying to hide the tone of anticipation in her voice.

“Uh, girl Ranma,” Kei replied, sheepishly.

A surly Hasegawa dug a hundred yen coin out of her purse and slammed it in front of her girlfriend. Minami did a little fist pump.

“Wait, which year was this?” Tadayasu asked, “cuz I went one year and there was this super cute Ranma cosplayer I really hit it off with, and-”

“That was me, dude. Oh my god, this whole time I thought you knew. Holy shit.” Kei was continuously surprised by her boyfriend’s inability to recognize her in costume. The thought had crossed her many times that he might just be totally face-blind.

The pizza arrived with impressive haste. The intoxicating aromas of melted cheese and grilled seafood filled the air around the booth as the gang dug in. It was a greasy and melty affair, but god damn did it hit the spot. After they left the restaurant, Hasegawa paused in front of her car.

“Oh, before I forget,” Hasegawa said, as she fished a plastic convenience store bag out of her girlfriend’s tote bag. “We put together a little care package for you two.”*

Kei and Tadayasu peered inside at its contents. “It’s got, uh, a couple different kinds of flavored condoms,” Hasegawa continued, counting off a list of items on her fingers, “a really basic vibrator-”

“It’s not butt-safe so don’t go digging with it,” Minami interjected.

“-uh, right,” Hasegawa continued, “Also there’s a big ol’ bottle of lube. So like, definitely get some use out of all that stuff.”

Kei blushed hard enough that it shone through her thick pale foundation. “O-oh. Thanks a ton, but uh, this is a little forward isn’t it?”

“Oh come off it!” Hasegawa exclaimed. “I know how insatiably fuckhungry twenty year olds are, believe me. Look, I don’t want you two hurting each other or getting one another sick. Don’t be squeamish about it, just use that shit!”

Kei realized that this was basically Hasegawa giving them her blessing, and responded with a deep bow and a formal “thank you.” Tadayasu followed in kind.

“I snuck some other stuff in there, too,” Minami said. “There’s a bottle of pills in there, uh, the white ones are bicalutamide, you probably want to take a half a pill a day and that’ll keep your balls suppressed, and then the green ones are estrogen, and you probably want to take one in the morning and one at night. I think there’s probably a month’s worth in there? When you’re running out, there’s a website address in there where you can order more, and then I also put in the phone number of a doctor a couple of my co-workers go to if you want like, a legit prescription.”

Kei was ready to burst into tears. This was it. Whether or not she’d known it, she’d been waiting for this bottle of pills for her entire teen life. She reached over and hugged Minami and cried tears of relief into her chest. Now her transition could finally progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Shoutouts to the fic “like a heart stumbles into knowledge” which has fucking abhorrent politics but an extremely good Hasegawa-ism.


	8. Texts from Minami

Hey Yuuki- it’s yer pal Minami

Anyway it was cool meeting you the other night

I just wanna say: you are not alone

It might feel that way sometimes, like being an otokonoko or whatever you decide to call yourself makes you alienated from society

But that’s not the case

Like, at all

Everyone knows a couple people like us. There’s always a few in a high school class, or around town. They’re lying if they try to deny that

We’ve always been a part of society. Just lately we’re on a kick of pretending everyone is the same and failure to conform is our fault somehow

I could go on a rant about colonialism and shit but I won’t bother you with the details

But the point is 

You have as much a right to be a part of the community as anyone else

Don’t feel like you have to move for anyone


End file.
